Radical Homemaker

Live Dangerously: Ten Easy Steps to Becoming a Radical Homemaker

When I first released Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, I was advised to make a list of "easy steps for becoming a radical homemaker" as part of my publicity outreach materials. My shoulders slumped at the very thought: Three years of research about the social, economic, and ecological significance of homemaking, and I had to reduce it to 10 easy tips? I didn't see a to-do list as a viable route to a dramatic shift in thinking, beliefs, and behaviors. But since the objective of such a list was smoother discussion and communication of Radical Homemaking ideas with the public, I did it.

I came up with the simplest things I could imagine—like committing to hanging laundry out to dry, dedicating a portion of the lawn to a vegetable garden, making an effort to get to know neighbors to enable greater cooperation and reduce resource consumption. I would perfunctorily refer back to them when radio dialogues flagged, when interviews seemed to be getting off track, or to distract myself when an occasional wave of personal sarcasm (I do have them on occasion) threatened to jeopardize an otherwise polite discourse about the book. After about 40 media interviews, I was pretty good at rattling them off, and I began to see their power and significance beyond helping me to be polite.

Her list:

* Commit to hanging your laundry out to dry.

* Dedicate a portion of your lawn to a vegetable garden.

* Get to know your neighbors. Cooperate to save money and resources.

* Go to your local farmers' market each week before you head to the grocery store.

* Do some spring cleaning to identify everything in your home that you absolutely don't need. Donate to help others save money and resources.

* Make a commitment to start carrying your own reusable bags and use them on all your shopping trips.

* Choose one local food item to learn how to preserve for yourself for the winter. Get your family to spend more evenings at home, preferably with the TV off.

* Cook for your family.

* Focus on enjoying what you have and who are with. Stop fixating on what you think you may need, or how things could be better "if only."

Simple things to do to break that consumer culture rut you're in.

Doomsday?

From Chelsea Green:

In mid-May, Michael Ruppert toured Vermont, speaking to groups about peak oil and the many signs of impending collapse. The tour concluded with a screening of the documentary film Collapse (which, according to Ruppert, has been pirated two million times!). This is a video made by Scott Moody, of his talk on May 13 at the Burlington, Vermont City Hall.

Watch and listen, but don’t worry, his predictions are only right 80% of the time…

Only 80%?

Gardening Lessons

Sowing Traditional Knowledge

Indigenous people and peasants have detailed knowledge of nature. Their religion is a spiritual form of farming - pleading to the gods to bring them a good harvest. Their celebrations, their fiestas, are prayers of enjoyment to their gods for their ancestors, animals, crops, harvest, the dead and the living.

Indigenous people in the Philippines consider the land a gift of the gods.

Land in the savannah grasslands of the Upper East region of Ghana is a sanctuary for the gods.

The Dai people of southwest China protect and preserve sacred groves where they worship their gods - exactly like the ancient Greeks.

The Dayak Pasir Adang people live in East Borneo, Indonesia, and practice sacred farming. If their reading of nature is auspicious, they use fire for clearing the land in order to plan their crops. They don't destroy or burn fruit-bearing trees or ground that has the graves of their ancestors. They sow seeds of spinach, bitter brassica, corn, and cucumber.

The ethno botanical knowledge of several indigenous people is remarkable. The Tzeltals and the Purepechas of Mexico recognize more than 1,200 and 900 plants respectively.

It was from that careful study and understanding of the workings of nature that traditional farming came into being.

Crop mixtures with animals, crops grown with trees near or within a forest, make up a traditional farming system. Mixing plants and animals is good farming because, together, they fertilize the land and keep pests under control. Crop mixtures attract insect predators and parasites that keep hostile insects and weeds in check.

In addition, the traditional seeds of the peasant have a greater resistance to disease. Farm animals (hogs, chicken, cattle) give the peasant milk, meat, and draft power while they eat weeds and crop residues recycling them into protein and manure for the land.

Moreover, traditional family farmers and peasants practice sustainable agriculture; that is, they practice not merely good husbandry, but, just as importantly, they and their agriculture are expressions of agricultural, ecological, and biodiversity principles, social justice, democracy, and very small-scale farming on the land.

In contrast to the unsustainable agricultural practices of industrialized farmers, peasants and small family farmers raise food in ways that enrich the land and create strong rural society; that is, they employ sustainable farming as a way of life.

There is so much to be learned from other cultures. So much to be learned from our forefathers as well. A different way of living, a different way of respecting nature, a different way of eating...

Gardens as Teachers

Cover via Amazon

How Gardening Teaches Patience

The thing about gardening is that you realize you can't rush things. A seed takes a certain amount of time to sprout, no matter what you do. A plant or tree takes a certain amount of time to grow, flower, or bear fruit, no matter what you do. No amount of chemicals or technology can make it go faster. And that's totally OK! Can you imagine? That there is still something in our world today we can't force to go faster? Crazy! Crazy good.

Even weeding is a good teacher of patience. It's always intimidating to look at a giant patch of weeds and realize that it's up to you to take them out. Sure, go ahead and spray some Roundup--poison the planet and your children (born or unborn). But you are missing the best part of weeding! Here is what I do: I take a blanket and a basket, and I get comfortable sitting on the ground. I time it so that it's either early or late in the day, and preferably in the shade, and I start at one end and keep going (moving the blanket along with me) until I am done.

What's so great about that? Well, for one thing, you start to see your garden up close. It's amazing all the living things you come across. You notice plants that weren't there before, and you can decide to let some stay just for fun. But most important, you have time to think. Time to let your mind wander while your hands are busy. Suddenly, you have ideas, insights, happy thoughts, resolution to problems. So when the weeding is done, not only do you have a great sense of accomplishment and your garden looks tons better, but your mind has been weeded too. That just can't be rushed.

This article reminded me of "Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World."

Perhaps a more appropriate subtitle would have been Zen and the Art of Horticulture Maintenance, since Johnson infuses every aspect of gardening with the philosophy that has been her guiding light for more than 30 years. A Zen Buddhist master, Johnson has served as head gardener for San Francisco’s Green Gulch Farm Center, a place of exceptional tranquility and vibrancy where her daily devotional meditation practices became as essential to the health and productivity of her gardens as they were to her body and soul.

It is not only the "eating" side of the garden that I enjoy, it is the "spiritual" side that drives me to be in the garden every day - pull weeds, talk to my plants, nurture...

Garlic Scapes

My garlic is taking over one corner of the garden.  This week I harvested the garlic scapes.

What are they?

Garlic scapes are the flower/seed stalk that shoots up from the garlic bulb. I like the way they curl and from what I understand if they not cut off they will eventually straighten out and bloom. The reason they cut them off they is so the bulb can get more energy to grow bigger and better.

The farmers’ markets and the CSA shares in this area are brimming with garlic scapes. Judging by the comments I heard at the market this morning, not everyone knows what they are or what to do with them. Tonight for dinner I’ll annoint them with some olive oil and grill them just like I do asparagus. They can be chopped thick or thin and added to salads and stir-fries.
My favorite thing to do with them is to make garlic scape pesto..

Garlic scape pesto

1 pound garlic scapes
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
Olive oil (about 1/2 to 1 cup)
Pine nuts if available

Chop the garlic scapes into 3 inch lengths. Put it int he food processor and process until pureed. Add the parmesan and pine nuts and process until smooth. Slowly add the olive oil as the food processor runs and continue until all the oil is combined into the garlic. Store in an air-tight jar in the refrigerator.

This was my weekend meal. Served over pasta - delicious!

Tony goes yachting

Mark Fiore's Lifestyles of the Rich & Fossil-Fueled.
Another great piece by Fiore.

Where are the bats?

Deadly Bat Disease Set to Go Global

No one likes to have their sleep disturbed but for hibernating bats it can actually be deadly. Geomyces destructans is caused by a white fungus that irritates infected bats' skin, rousing them from their slumber and causing them to expend precious reserves of energy—often leading to starvation.

Since first being discovered in Northern New York, the syndrome has spread west. Now, an outbreak in caves in Oklahoma have experts worried it is poised to spread across the hemisphere.

Have not seen any bats in the sky near my garden. Could this be the cause? Hope not!

Ooops!

New Accident at Leaking BP Well: Oil Gushing Freely Into Gulf Again

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, leader of the Federal response to the BP oil disaster, announced this morning that an accident involving a robotic submarine at the site of the leaking well has dislodged the containment cap which had been capturing a significant portion of oil gushing from the well. As a result, Allen said, the oil is now flowing freely into the Gulf.

Allen said that a remotely operated vehicle had bumped into one of the cap’s vents, closing it. Because excess oil and gas could not escape from the vent, gas began to rise through a pipe carrying warm water to the cap, forcing technicians to remove the cap.

Do you get the feeling that this will never end?

Follow the Money

Obama Will Appeal Judge's Ruling Against Drilling Moratorium

The Obama administration will appeal a ruling from a New Orleans' federal courthouse that its six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling is illegal.

"We will immediately appeal to the 5th circuit the president strongly believes as the Department of Interior and the Department of Justice argued yesterday that continuing to drill at these depths without knowing what happened does not make any sense and... potentially puts the safety of those on the rigs and the environment in the Gulf at a danger that the president does not believe we can afford right now," said spokesman Robert Gibbs during Tuesday's briefing.

The comment from Gibbs came just moments after a U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman ordered an end to the temporary halt in drilling, which had been put in place by the Obama administration order to conduct safety checks on other wells in the Gulf.

Why in spite of the biggest environmental disaster threatening Earth? Maybe because...
Judge Who Lifted Moratorium Tied To Offshore Drilling Companies

The federal judge who lifted Obama's six-month drilling moratorium had interests in Transocean and a number of other offshore energy companies, according to financial disclosure forms from 2008.

Martin Feldman, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, held energy stocks in Transocean and Halliburton, as well as two of BP's largest U.S. private shareholders -- BlackRock and JP Morgan Chase. The law Feldman overturned would have halted the approval of any new permits and suspended deepwater drilling at 33 existing exploratory wells in the Gulf, four of which are BP rigs.

Guess he never heard of recusing himself.

Be the change

We All Have Oil on Our Hands

At first I resisted commenting on the oil spill in the Gulf. What more could I add to what has already been said. But then I realized that as disturbing as it is, this disaster provides us with an opportunity for something good, perhaps even a turning point that invokes sustainable change in our lives and for the environment.

I know that I will be seen as a radical when I say that this isn't the fault of BP or Transocean. It's not the fault of the government or bi-partisan politics. It is not the fault of oil executives and big corporations.

It is my fault.
It is your fault.
It is our fault.

This is the universe's way of waking us up, of letting us know that it is time that we take personal responsibility for the havoc that our collective greed has had on our planet. It is known that thoughts and actions create energy. Whether or not you believe in Karma you can at least accept what physicists say that consciousness determines reality. If this is our reality what is our consciousness saying?

This disaster is the most recent effect, in a long line of effects -- from Madoff to the War in Iraq -- that stem from putting our heads in the sand and refusing to face the reality that our consciousness, our desires, our thoughts, our actions and even our solutions are based on short term and selfish thinking.

Our dependence on the pollutants of this earth have always, and will continue to have far-reaching consequences to our eco-systems, biosystems, geosystems and our race's natural evolution.

Change is inevitable. Things absolutely cannot stay the same. The type of change we invoke is up to each and every one of us. If we each take responsibility in shifting our own behavior, we can trigger the type of change that is necessary to achieve sustainability for our race or this planet.

We change our planet, our environment, our humanity every day, every year, every decade, and every millennia.

It is critical that we believe that you and me can actually make a difference. If we neglect our power and let things just happen, then we are merely contributing to future oil spills and other impending disasters.

As with every revolution or movement of change, a critical mass must be achieved. A tipping point where one person, one event, one incident galvanizes society into action. This disaster could be it. The power of one is key to our success. The power that you, me, our family, our friends, our spheres of influence, and our full extensions, can invoke positive changes that alters the course of human history. We have reached a critical juncture in our existence on this planet. All of us can do one thing differently towards change. All of us can alter one aspect of our behavior. For each of us, it is a different change in our routine. For some, it might be walking or biking to the market instead of driving. For others, it might be car-pooling or even drinking from re-usable bottles instead of discarding plastic bottles. For others it can be not slamming the car door that will cause a tornado on the other side of the world - Google butterfly effect and read about the power of a single action.

Trends are made up of individuals wishing to make a change. How incredible would it be if you would be the actual person to bring on the tipping point. How awesome would it be if you and me, our friends, our family, our society, were responsible for the changes that can positively impact our environment and our planet. Personal responsibility is not only recognizing the errors of our ways. Personal responsibility lies in our willingness and ability to correct those errors individually and collectively.

It all starts with you and me!

No Kombucha at Whole Foods?

Kombucha Drinks Pulled From Whole Foods' Shelves and On Tap

Whole Foods has removed all raw kombucha products from all of their stores. Although it is well known that kombucha contains trace amounts of alcohol, the products were removed due to concerns with slightly elevated alcohol levels because products containing more than .5% alcohol must be labeled with a warning.

Solution: brew your own. Easy. Great tasting. Good for you.

Two points!

A Mouth Watering Tempeh Reuben

I spent the past weekend at a yoga retreat in Asheville, N.C. It was gorgeous and a perfect escape from the rush of summer. I stayed at a friend's house about 15 minutes outside of Asheville, tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was even a black bear outside my window at one point. Another reason why I love Asheville is because it's the sort of town where everyone is a vegetarian and therefore, there's tons of great vegetarian cuisine. You can find a number of vegetarian eateries, not just one or two, and everyone is well versed in preparing vegetarian foods.

My friend, for example, made this excellent tempeh reuben that made me melt inside it was so delicious. I would go ahead and make my own thousand island dressing so that you don't end up with all those preservatives and additives that come in prepared salad dressings. I included a recipe below. And also make sure to slice the tempeh thin enough so that you get a good fry out of it. Be generous with the sauerkraut and thousand island dressing when you're putting together the sandwich.

Tempeh Reubens

Serves 2

8 oz tempeh

5 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

¼ cup Vidalia onions, diced

4 slices rye bread

2 tbsp thousand island dressing (recipe to follow)

1/4 cup (or more) sauerkraut

4 slices Swiss cheese

Method

1. Slice the tempeh so that it's about ½ inch thick.

2. Heat the olive oil up to medium and add garlic and onions. Cook until softened and add in tempeh. Fry tempeh for about 4 minutes on each side.

3. Toast the rye bread on each side. Add a slather of thousand island dressing on both pieces of bread. Top with tempeh, onions, sauerkraut, and cheese. Melt under the broiler and serve immediately.

Easy Thousand Island Dressing

1 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup ketchup

1/4 cup pickle relish

Method

1. Combine ingredients and serve.

The two awarded points?   One point for the recipe - love tempeh and this sounds great.  The other?  Asheville - I'll get to see you real soon - I hope.

Be prepared!

American Chernobyl

An uncontrollable industrial catastrophe, a worm-eaten system controlled by a rigid nomenklatura, a dynamic leader who wants to change things: doesn't that remind you of something? Yes, of course: Chernobyl, the Soviet Communist Party, Gorbachev.

Let's recall the 1980s: during that era, people knew that the USSR was doing poorly, but who would have bet a franc or a dollar on its rapid collapse? Still less so, given that the country had found an appealing and modern leader. From the outset, Gorbachev committed to vigorous reforms (glasnost and perestroika) even as he changed the USSR's foreign policy through detente with Ronald Reagan.

And then Chernobyl exploded. The catastrophe revealed the system's fragility. In 1989, the Berlin Wall crumbled; in 1991, the USSR was dissolved. Russia entered a decade of hard economic recession.

People today know that the United States isn't doing well, but who would bet a Euro or a Yuan on that country's rapid collapse? Still less so, given that the country has elected an appealing and modern leader. From the outset, he committed to vigorous reforms (the stimulus and the healthcare law) even as he acknowledged that the United States could no longer run everything in the world.

And then Deepwater Horizon exploded... The unstoppable gushing of oil provoked is proving to be a historic environmental catastrophe. It simultaneously demonstrates the incompetence of big private companies and (after a first failure during Hurricane Katrina, in 2005) the state's inability to master the situation.

Like Chernobyl, Deepwater Horizon derives its meaning from its context - that of a society dominated by a capitalist oligarchy that rejects any in-depth change in spite of the financial disaster for which it is responsible. Wall Street remains as solidly attached to its privileges, as were Soviet dignitaries.

Moreover, politicians, advertising and media maintain the fiction that the American dream can endure without disruption. But a pillar of American power has been shaken: that of cheap energy. Mr. Obama tries to make his fellow citizens understand: "What we can predict is that the availability of fossil fuel is going to be diminishing; that it's going to get more expensive to recover; that there are going to be environmental costs that our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren are going to have to bear," he said in a June 13 Politico.com interview.

The end of cheap oil is the end of the "American way of life." Will the United States stand up to the challenge? One may think they will. Or not.

 Better start learning those basic skills - sewing, cooking, farming...  

Diane Wilson - activist

Diane Wilson from Bioneers on Vimeo.
Here is the woman arrested at the BP hearing.  Why so many police to arrest her?  To quiet the truth?